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Chapter One

Michael's index finger slid over the screen of his iPad, his eyes gliding over the news scrolling in front of his face. The familiar sting of eye strain started again and he let out a heavy sigh.

Placing the device down, Michael squeezed the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb, keeping his eyes closed for a few seconds. He missed the days when everything was done on paper, but the times had changed, and newspapers were a thing of the past.

Picking up the tablet, he navigated to the finance section. His eyes skimmed down until he found the name of his company in black and white.

NorthBio was down two points—a relatively normal fluctuation that didn't really cause him any concern.

Going back to the start of the business section, Michael's finger paused over the front page, hovering over the face of a man smugly smiling at the camera. His eyes darted to the headline.

'Senko Meat set to expand into the western conference.'

Michael's teeth ground together, his free hand curling into a tight fist on the table top. The more he read, the more enraged he became. Valentin Senko, the sonofabitch from Chicago, was expanding his business portfolio, supplying the western states with meat.

Michael's eyes went back to the photo of Senko. A tall, blond man, his face was chiseled into hard angles. His sharp cheekbones framed his eyes; two hard chips of ice glaring out of the screen. His mouth was turned up in a smug snarl.

Michael dropped the iPad and sat back in his chair, letting his hands clench and unclench until he felt the seething anger start to drain away. For ten years, Michael had had the monopoly on beef supply on the west coast. He shipped his product from Blaine, WA to San Diego, CA, and he'd never had to deal with a serious competitor...

Until now.

'Goddamn it,' he growled, his fist coming down onto the table beside his tablet. His mind churned with the implications when a smile broke free on his lips. This bastard wasn't going to last. In all his time, there had been people who had tried to take a slice of his pie, but they'd always fallen by the wayside; their businesses had folded when their shares took a nose dive.

Michael picked up the iPad again and let out a deep breath. Senko Meats would be nothing soon. It would disappear just as quickly as they'd appeared in his territory.

Determined to know as much about the competition as possible, Michael forced his eyes and brain to cooperate and read the remainder of the article. Apparently, Senko had been supplying the mid-west for the past few years, his business growing exponentially in that time. He'd heard of Senko before, but only in passing. He never thought he'd become a threat. He never thought he'd expand so far west.

'Hi Daddy,' Sasha said cheerily, dragging him from his dark, malicious thoughts. Michael pushed his rage away, hiding it from his daughter's innocent eyes.

He looked up to see Sasha helping herself to a vegan blueberry muffin his housekeeper, Suzy, had baked that morning. His daughter was dressed in a singlet and running shorts, trainers on her feet.

She was looking more and more like her mother by the day. Her long dark hair, which normally swung past her shoulders, was pulled up into a tight ponytail. Her skin looked perpetually sun-kissed, making her the envy of every woman who had to visit a salon or sit out in the sun for hours on end just to achieve the same look.

Sasha set about pouring herself a cup of coffee, dropping into the chair beside him at the counter. Picking up a piece of muffin with her fingers, she bit into it and chewed twice before glancing at his face.